Dear Mom,
I'm so glad I got a hold of you today and that I got to talk to Abbie and Michael. I really miss you all and wish you were here with me, because England is waaay more fun than California. Well, the other day (Monday) the whole Centre went to the Globe Theatre, which is a replica of what we think Shakespeare's theatre looked like. We got to sit on the benches and look out at the thrusted stage (that means there is audience on three sides of the stage, not the picture frame kind we are used to). It's all made of wood, so it smells really good. But the people that built it had to get special permission from the city to give it a thatched roof like the original because thatching is flammable. Incredibly so. Actually, it's how the first Globe burned down. Somebody didn't clean out a cannon properly and it lit the roof on fire. Nowadays there are no cannons and plenty of fire exits, so we weren't in any danger.
On Wednesday we actually went to a play in the Globe. It was A Midsummer Night's Dream, which we actually saw in Tahoe, too, I recognized a lot of the scenes and things from then. Except I actually saw the end this time because I wasn't asleep. It was really good though. The part with the Mechanicals and the play within a play was really funny. At one point the man who plays the moon stalks off the stage because the duke has insulted his acting. And the Wall sounds like a fourth grader who had to memorize his lines. It's really funny. After the play a bunch of us went to Westminster Abbey, which was incredible. It was full of monuments to dead people and it had the coffin of Elizabeth II. I stood next to one of the most powerful women in the world! Well, her remains, but still. She once lived. All the kings and queens were crowned in Westminster Abbey, and a good number of them are buried there. There's a shrine to Edward the Confessor, who lived in the 1100s. The Abbey is so old!
Today I only had one class (yay!) and then a bunch of us went to St. Bartholomew's church. It is the oldest church in London, and has beautiful medieval arches and is all dark and mysterious. They still have weddings there, but you have to be a member of the parish or one of your parents has to have been married there. There's a wedding tomorrow that I may go to. Or I may see a matinee of something or go the London Museum, which is an assignment.
I rode home on the tube by myself the first time today. We had a class assignment to go to a crime fiction discussion by three popular authors. One of them was Anne Perry, who wrote one of the books for our mystery class. She was well-informed and interesting. And I found out that when she was 13 she and her friend actually killed her friend's mom. So it's ironic that she writes mystery novels today. Then again, this is all hearsay, and Perry actually converted to the Church about 40 years ago, so she must be all right now or she'd be excommunicated. Drama, though. And it was really interesting listening to how much they know about mysteries. All three of the ladies say that they create their plots by imagining what would cause someone to commit a murder, then work backwards and stick in clues like flags. One said she was kind of embarassed to admit that's how she wrote, and then Perry said she didn't know there was any other way. So I need to think of some conceivable reason someone would take another's life. I can imagine reasons real people would kill each other, but it's hard to imagine imaginary people and give them thoughts and feelings etc. But the authors all say that they base a lot of characters off people they know. And who would I insult by making them the murderer? It's a gherkin (pickle in British).
So I've been having a wonderful time and will try to put pictures here now for those who don't have facebook. But really they should just get facebook because I'll put far more pictures on that.
Love from
Lindsay
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